By considering the importance of religious tourism for travel and the tourism industry, this study aims to identify religious tourists experiences in Jerusalem, as one of the most important holy cities. By a survey, 848 data were collected from the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious tourists. Results showed that religious tourism experience was a multi-faceted construct, which consists of engaging mentally, discovering new things, interacting & belonging, connecting spiritually & emotionally, and relaxing & finding peace dimensions. By using these dimensions, perceived experience differences of tourists were examined depending on religion. Moreover, religious tourism experience was identified to significantly affect overall tourist satisfaction with Jerusalem. The study concluded with discussion of the findings and their implications.
keywords: Religious tourism| Religious tourist experience| Overall satisfaction| Jerusalem

There has been limited published research examining travellers’ perceptions of international stopover destinations. This manuscript reports the modelling of consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) for Dubai, the first CBBE study to do so in the context of a stopover destination. Dubai has emerged relatively recently as a stopover destination option during long haul travel between UK/Europe and Australia/South Pacific, to rival traditional destinations such as Hong Kong and Singapore. The CBBE model was tested using survey data from samples of consumers in two geographically distant markets; France (n = 365) and Australia (n = 403). The findings suggest destination brand awareness, destination brand image and destination brand value are positively related to attitudinal destination loyalty. However, destination brand quality was not positively associated with loyalty. As a relatively new stopover destination for long haul travellers, Dubai is perceived more positively by previous visitors than those who have never visited the destination.
keywords: CBBE; Stopover| Destination marketing| Destination branding| Destination image| Dubai| Long haul

The purpose of the present study was to determine factors impeding the development of medical tourism in East Azerbaijan province, Iran. The data were derived from interviews with 16 key informants. Data analysis of the study was conducted through employing the software MAXQDA-12. The results show that marketing, international issues, culture, transfer, brokerage, management, and policy problems are the main barriers to the development of medical tourism. It seems that East Azerbaijan province should provide necessary context for the participation and investment of private sector in the field of medical tourism. Further, it should design and implement long and short-term strategies in proportion to the problems raised.
keywords: Medical tourism| Tourism development| East Azerbaijan province

Digital-free tourism (DFT) describes tourism spaces where internet and mobile signals are either absent or digital technology usage is controlled. By employing critical discourse analysis of over 450 media texts produced between 2009 and 2017, the study reported the conceptual understanding of DFT, the ways the media representation has changed over time and explored the broad social context and debates in which the concept is embedded. By reading and reviewing the texts, unsupervised (automatic) Leximancer analysis, and manual coding, a shift in the representation of the concept was established. Initially framed simply as a reaction to the pressures of abundant connectivity in the years 2009–2015, recently the possibility for human flourishing, well-being and an enhanced lifestyle have emerged. Holiday making in a digital-free environment is intimately linked to the ways individuals can manage their contemporary relationships and experiences rather than be controlled by the technologies others have created.
keywords: Digital-free tourism| ICT (information and communication technology)| Media discourse| Critical discourse analysis| (Dis)connectivity| Relationships

Drawing upon the appraisal theory, this study proposes and tests a conceptual model to delineate customers’ evaluative process of disruptive customer behaviors in a shared service environment (e.g., theme parks, airplanes, restaurants). Using a scenario-based online experiment, two sets of data were collected from U.S. customers and analyzed by a series of regression analyses. Findings suggest that customers go through a systematic evaluative process of primary appraisal (e.g., congruence and relevance) and secondary appraisal (e.g., cognitions and emotions), which results in the development of coping behaviors (e.g., active and passive coping). Cognitions are found to have direct influences on passive and active coping. Perceived powerlessness, perceived betrayal, and perceived identity threat are identified as critical cognitions. Negative emotions are found to result in active coping. Primary appraisal (e.g., congruence and relevance) either directly affects coping behaviors, or indirectly through cognitions and negative emotions. Theoretical and managerial implications are further elaborated.
keywords: Customer misbehavior| Disruptive customers| Appraisal theory| Perceived powerlessness| Perceived betrayal| Negative emotions

Achieving partner acquiescence is critical in interfirm exchanges because it allows the focal firm to achieve its desired outcomes. Using a case study on dyadic relationships between inbound tour operators in Tanzania and their overseas outbound partners, this paper investigates the effect of partner irreplaceability and distributive fairness on acquiescence, and the subsequent effect that acquiescence has on conflict. The case study uses partial least squares structural equation modeling on data collected from 129 dyadic relationships. Results show that partner irreplaceability and distributive fairness are positively associated with acquiescence, which in turn reduces conflict. The effect of distributive fairness on acquiescence was found to be larger than that of irreplaceability. In addition, the direct effect of distributive fairness on conflict, although not hypothesised, was found to be significant. This emphasises the importance of distributive fairness, and its role as a possible buffer to conflict in less acquiescent exchanges.
keywords: Partner irreplaceability| Distributive fairness| Acquiescence| Conflict| Interfirm exchange| Tourism value chain

This study investigates the relationships among souvenir authenticity, perceived value (PV) and behavioral intention (BI) in the context of experiential consumption. Using the customer data from the Pearl River Delta region of China, this empirical study adopts a PLS-SEM model to further examine the mediating effect of PV and the moderating effect of experiential consumption on the relationship between souvenir authenticity and BI. In comparison with the non-experiential consumption setting, souvenir authenticity was found to have a greater positive effect on the BI of tourist through PV in the experiential consumption setting. In addition, different dimensions of authenticity and PV are emphasized during souvenir purchases in the experiential consumption. These results deepen the understanding of souvenir authenticity and PV as well as the effects of experiential consumption for postmodern tourists. Managerial implications are provided for practitioners.
keywords: Souvenir authenticity| Experiential consumption| Perceived value| Behavioral intention| Chinese tourists| Moderated mediation

Travel party size has been shown to affect tourists behavior. However, due to a previous lack of big-data analytical techniques, there remains limited research on the effect of party size on tourist movements from a large-scale perspective. This paper presents an empirical case study on the understanding of tourist movement patterns from the perspective of party size using mobile tracking data in Xian, China. A Fine-grained Travel Party Partition (FTPP) method is proposed to automatically distinguish accompanied tourists from a dataset of all tourists in Xian. After aggregating travel parties according to the size, tourist movement patterns are compared across different party sizes from demographic, spatial and temporal aspects. We further discuss how the obtained insights can help the stakeholders in travel package improvement, connectivity enhancement among attractions, attraction planning and management, and personalized next-attraction recommendation.
keywords: Mobile tracking data| Travel party size| Tourist movement pattern

This paper presents a hotel location model that incorporates concepts from both game theory and gravitational site location models. We consider a hotel chain intending to build new hotels in a given region. Customers travel to the region to visit some specific points, termed “attractions”, and they choose a hotel according to room price, location and hotel attractiveness. Competitor hotels react to the new hotels by changing prices, in order to maximize their own profits, so the final set of prices will be a Nash equilibrium. We propose an iterative procedure for finding the equilibrium prices and a genetic algorithm-based procedure for finding the optimal strategy, in terms of new hotels to be built and respective typologies. Using a mini case, we illustrate and analyse the influence of several parameters. Then, we present computational experiments, concluding that the proposed procedures are effective in finding good solutions for the model.
keywords: Tourism site location| Game theory| Genetic algorithms| Spatial interaction models